The final GambleAware Annual Conference in London yesterday mixed general confusion and fear about the research, education and treatment levy with a more constructive tone than shown in recent years. Leading anti-gambling campaigner James Noyes of the Social Market Foundation (SMF) told guests at the final GambleAware Annual Conference in London yesterday (Dec 10th) that…
New research reveals large language models can exhibit human-like gambling addiction behaviours and shows they even possess internal “risk circuits” that can drive them toward bankruptcy. A new study from South Korea’s Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology presents the strongest evidence to date that popular large language models (LLMs) – including GPT-4o-mini, GPT-4.1-mini, Gemini-2.5-Flash,…
The Better Gambling Forum (BGF), a Brain Capital Alliance-affiliated platform for evidence-based gambling policy, has announced the completion of its scientific oversight committee. The committee is composed of experts in a variety of fields, including public health, addiction science, and gambling understanding. BGF steering committee chairman Shawn Fluharty told Player Protection Hub: “We could sugarcoat…
Problem gambling support and treatment services are at risk as a result of the tax increases on the UK gambling industry, as funds for the statutory levy dwindle.
This was the warning of Dan Waugh, Partner at Regulus Partners, who appeared on iGaming Daily following the UK government’s decision to ignore stark warnings from across the industry and increase remote gaming duty from 21% to 40% in April next year.
Alongside a new 25% general betting duty rate for remote betting being introduced from April 2027 (excluding self-service betting terminals, spread betting, pool bets and horse racing), the knock-on impact from these hikes could be that players are less protected and supported.
While the main potential causality of the increase, labelled by operators and the Office for Budget Responsibility themselves, has been more players wagering on the black market, one thing that has barely been mentioned has been how the tax rises will impact statutory levy support, which funds problem gambling prevention and treatment services.
Waugh dived into this topic on iGaming Daily, noting that treatment and prevention services could be affected since levy funding is largely driven by contributions from online gambling operators and ultimately, the levy itself could collapse.
“Since April, funding for gambling disorder treatment services in this country has been pegged to spending in the licensed market via the statutory levy,” noted Waugh.
“If spending in the licensed market is reduced as a result of these tax changes, funding for treatment services in this country will fall. That’s a straight mathematical equation, that’s not our opinion, that is just what will happen.
“It’s worth reflecting that if you look at projected funding from the statutory levy to fund treatment services and other harm prevention measures, about 80% comes from online gaming and betting, it’s more than 50% from online gaming.
“If there is significant displacement from the licensed market into the black market in online casino, the statutory levy that was put in place in April to fund treatment services and harm prevention will collapse.”
Waugh added that independent charities who provide gambling harm support and treatment could be hit hard as a result of the tax increase, impacting players that need help.
He stated: “The commissioners under the levy generally are self-interested. So OHID and NHS both have their own services. They will likely prioritise them, which means that charities will be at the back of the queue.
“Because of this ideological purity that some of the anti-gambling campaigners and public health insists on, these charities have been told you cannot seek money from the gambling industry, which has funded you for the past 25 years or more, you’re not allowed to. Charities will be put in a real pinch.
“Some of these think tank proposals incoherently said if you raise taxes, that increases player safety. One, I think that’s entirely speculative, but two, the chances are it will push people to the black market.
“If you’re doing that, at the same time as you’re pulling the rug out from underneath the treatment services that look after people who get into difficulties with their gambling, the net consequence of that could be absolutely devastating.
“There could be massive harm arising from these really very poorly thought-through proposals.”
To listen to the full iGaming Daily episode – Ep 657: What Next For UK Gambling After Online Tax Hikes Confirmed In Budget? – click here.
As Europe marks Safer Gambling Week 2025, conversations are taking place across the continent to put in place strategies that keep players safe while they enjoy gambling responsibly. One operator who has been at the forefront of these conversations, not just on Safer Gambling Week but since the summer, is 1xBet. Since the appointment of Simon Westbury as its…
Operators, suppliers, regulators and consultants gathered online ahead of Safer Gambling Week to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the realm of player protection. Here are three takeaways. Danish Gambling Authority Director Anders Dorph highlighted new laws in Denmark that made it a crime to target under-18s with gambling advertising and gave the…
EPIC Global Solutionsproclaims 2025 as its most expansive year achieving milestone of its harm prevention programme, beyond what its founders envisioned in 2013.
Expanding its harm prevention practice beyond UK-shores, EPIC Global is now active in 30 jurisdictions, helping the safer gambling policy stakeholders in mature and emerging markets.
Its international expansion phase is underscored by EPIC Global forming 47 active relationships with partners spanning all key functions of gambling as a high-risk sector.
Reflecting on EPIC’s trajectory, CEO Paul Buck stated: “When we founded EPIC in 2013, we believed harm prevention needed to sit at the centre of gambling policy, not at the periphery. To see our work now embedded across 30 jurisdictions is a powerful sign that the industry is ready to place prevention on equal footing with regulation and commercial growth.”
North American expansion
EPIC’s momentum has been particularly evident in North America, where it has established itself as a frontline responsible-gaming services provider to market leaders including FanDuel and BetMGM. Its training and consultancy programmes have supported more than 95,000 individuals across the continent, including 27,801 NCAA athletes and staff during the 2024/25 academic cycle.
Meanwhile, the Know Your Play digital portal—developed with ROGA, Kindbridge and RGC—reached 68,435 US college students in just eight months, marking one of the largest youth-focused RG interventions in the region.
EPIC has also deepened its footprint in the daily fantasy sports category, designing tailored training modules for PrizePicks and Underdog. Its work played a central role in PrizePicks becoming the first DFS operator in North America to secure iCAP accreditation for responsible gaming.
Commenting on the market’s evolution, EPIC North America SVP Teresa Fiore said: “North America’s rapid expansion in sports betting brings extraordinary opportunity, but also new responsibility. Our work across the U.S. and Canada is centred on one principle: protecting people. By embedding lived experience, education, and behavioural insight into every partnership, we are helping teams, operators, and regulators create environments where individuals can thrive safely.”
Expanding UK reach & Euro bespoke programmes
Beyond North America, EPIC continues to cement its leadership across the UK and Europe through renewed and expanded partnerships with major operators, sports leagues and integrity bodies.
Entain reinforced its long-term commitment by commissioning EPIC to deliver global staff training across multiple territories, achieving a 99% positive satisfaction rate. In the UK, Sky Bet and Flutter maintained EPIC as their core partner for staff RG training for an eighth consecutive year.
Meanwhile, EPIC played a central role in the launch of William Hill and the Scottish Professional Football League’s gambling-harm education programme, now active across all 42 Scottish clubs and delivering post-session awareness uplift of more than 93% among players.
In Greece, lottery and gaming technology giant INTRALOT elevated EPIC to review and enhance RG frameworks across its active markets, while newly formed FDJ United partnered with EPIC to design specialist training for customer-care teams to strengthen intervention protocols.
Across all territories, EPIC’s programmes engaged more than 109,000 people between September 2024 and August 2025. The reach spans professional athletes across Europe, North America and Australia; operator staff across 18 global gambling brands; youth and community groups; and tens of thousands of students engaged through NCAA partnerships and digital education portals.
This breadth reflects EPIC’s core philosophy that effective training must be grounded in lived experience, blending behavioural science with real-world narratives to shift culture, strengthen empathy and embed sustainable harm-prevention practices.
Beyond Training: 2026 Digital Innovation and R&D
EPIC’s expansion is increasingly driven by research, digital innovation and a dedicated R&D strategy designed to future-proof harm prevention. Among the organisation’s most significant advances is a pioneering PhD study examining gambling’s impact on women’s elite sport, presented at leading conferences in New York and Finland. EPIC has also developed a suite of multilingual eLearning modules for the European Athletes & Players Association (EAPA) as part of the continent-wide PROtect Integrity project, delivering specialist education in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Danish.
Further innovations include scenario-based digital learning tools designed to strengthen early-risk recognition, alongside scalable interactive learning platforms capable of delivering bespoke content across global markets.
On EPIC’s shift towards a research-led future, CEO Paul Buck added: “The future of harm prevention lies in evidence, technology and lived experience working in unison. Our investment in research and digital learning is not a side project—it is central to how prevention must evolve if we’re going to stay ahead of emerging risks in a globalised gambling market.”
As EPIC enters 2026, the organisation’s combination of global programme delivery, expanding R&D capability and lived-experience leadership signals a new era of harm-prevention strategy—one in which prevention, innovation and player protection are increasingly recognised as essential to the long-term sustainability of the gambling industry.
In his latest piece for iGaming Expert, Šimon Vincze, Head of Sustainable & Safer Gambling at CasinoGuru, tackles a controversial subject as he examines what the gambling ecosystem would look like in the absence of the illicit sector.
There has been a new type of discussion centred around the positives, or rather, the legitimacy of illegal gambling. Perhaps controversial for some, but definitely interesting. It is a question of principle, law, and morality as well as cause and effect. One thing is sure: the illegal market keeps us on our toes and forces us to collaborate in tackling it.
It reminds me of my university years when I studied international politics. During a lecture on globalisation, someone asked whether it was possible to attain complete unity. The professor responded with cold confidence that it would only happen if there were a substantial external threat, likely from outer space, naturally, aliens.
Fast forward 15 years, and I am no longer so sure about that. You don’t need to be a superintelligent extraterrestrial to understand that people are easily manipulated. Thankfully, there is no propaganda claiming that illegal gambling is here to save us. Still, you must admit that some effects of its presence push the industry forward.
How would the gambling world look if it were not so easy to play at offshore operators? I find it exciting to think about it, but I dare not draw any conclusions. However, I will most probably not be writing this article, and we would know much less about the gambling experience that is exciting, but safe(r) at the same time.
Measuring the threat
After a brief philosophical warm-up, let’s examine the size of the hydra. As I have heard people refer to it recently, because each time you shut down one illegal channel, two new ones emerge. This is especially true in social media environments that are difficult for authorities to regulate but remain popular among younger generations.
Recent global meta-analyses of over 3500 reports show that nearly 18% of adolescents have gambled in the past 12 months. I believe the actual number of those exposed to gambling or gambling features is considerably higher.
Without considering different age groups, the American Gambling Association stated in their report that 48% of respondents had bet on illegal offers. This was in 2022, while a more recent estimate from Yield Sac claims that offshore gambling accounts for 74% of US gross gambling revenue. Additionally, a recent report in Sweden suggests that channelisation rates for online casinos have fallen to between 72% and 82%.
Casino Guru’s analyses of Google searches for specific casino brands reveal that more than half of these are directed towards illegal operators in the Netherlands. Our data shows a rise in such searches following the introduction of deposit limits in October 2024. Other countries are not performing well either, with around 20% of illegal searches in the United Kingdom and Sweden, and nearly a third in Spain.
Safer Gambling Week 2025 (#SGWeek2025) takes place this week (17-23 November), with all UK gambling stakeholders expressing their full commitment to promoting safer play and responsible gambling.
Entering its ninth consecutive year, the initiative is co-led and coordinated by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), amusement trade body BACTA, the Bingo Association – and all other memberships associated with UK Gambling.
Last year’s edition highlighted that over 1.5 million unique accounts used a safer gambling tool during the week, which was a 22% YoY increase. The number of people who set deposit limits went up by 14%.
Furthermore, more than 60 million impressions on online safer gambling messages were generated across the biggest social media platforms – X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. It is safe to say that the organisers will aim to break these records in 2025 in the week running from 17 to 23 November.
Baroness Twycross, UK’s Minister for Gambling, said: “As a Government, we are fully committed to reducing harmful gambling and protecting those at risk. That is why we have introduced a statutory levy aimed at providing funding to tackle this.
“We welcome the contribution that Safer Gambling Week makes. It provides a good opportunity to highlight the tools and support that is available to people who may need it.”
Also engaging with the campaign was Andrew Rhodes, CEO of the UK Gambling Commission, who reiterated the importance of this week’s activity for the industry and its commitment to consumer protection.
“While progress has been made, we must continue to ensure that the tools and protections available to consumers are effective and widely promoted.
“Collaboration and evidence-based action remain central to making gambling in Great Britain fairer, safer, and crime-free,” Rhodes commented.
Joining the responsible gambling conversation was also Louie French, Conservative Party MP and Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, who said: “I’m backing the Safer Gambling Week campaign to tackle gambling-related harm. This important initiative brings the industry together to support safe and responsible gambling.
“Millions of people safely enjoy a flutter every month, whether it’s on the horses, football, or the lottery. But for some, gambling can cause immense harm to their lives. It’s vital that the industry quickly identifies and supports these people.”
Interestingly, French also made a comment against the widely-speculated gambling tax increases that are expected to be announced with the UK’s new Budget on 26 November.
The public debate has been led by speculations whether Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves will increase the duties across the board or leave betting out of the equation.
In his Safer Gambling Week statement, French added: “If the Government taxes people away from regulated bookmakers, they’ll fuel unsafe betting online.”
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has published the last out of a part-four series on its approach towards the black market.
While comprehensive, the Yonder Consulting-conducted report did recognise some of the caveats that obstruct the exact estimate of the prominence of the online black market in the UK.
Consumer awareness, drivers, and motivations
To understand the current trends better, the UKGC attempted to first build a profile of the typical black market player with part one of its study, published on 18 September.
With the agreement that it shouldn’t be treated as representative of all those who gamble online, the study outlined four typical characteristics of the users that engage with illegal gambling.
These are generally men, between the age of 18 and 24, who are active gamblers, and who usually rank eight or above on the PGSI problem gambling scale. They typically go to the black market to bet on football, for online bingo, or to play online fruit or slot games.
The motivation behind going out of their way to find illegal sites are most often better odds and offers, games unavailable elsewhere, access to alternative payments like crypto, no stake limits, and a low entry barrier – meaning weak ID or financial checks.
Still, the majority of responses painted illegal gambling as “supplementary rather than exclusive”, meaning people favoured more time and money spent on licensed websites.
Interestingly, however, this seemed to contradict another key highlight – the Commission established that players generally had low levels of awareness of the illegal iGaming market, with responses denying illegal play but indicating differently elsewhere, and vice versa.
Furthermore, only a minority of people was able to name specific black market operators – “numerous” responses named licensed providers as such. Almost all, however, responded that having a licence in the UK is important.
In conclusion, the first part of the Commission’s report found a “disconnect between perceived license importance, understanding if an operator is licensed, and knowledge of how to verify that”.
For the second part of its report, the regulator measured consumers’ rates of engagement with the online black market. Between May 2024 and July 2025, a total of 1,000 unique black market websites were identified, but “no overall increase in engagement in Great Britain”, the Commission stated.
Disruption strategies
Part three highlighted the three tactics that the gambling authority is utilising to hit the black market where it hurts the most. These are Regulation and Investigation (RI), Technological Advances (TA), and Marketing Strategy (MS).
RI includes legal and enforcement measures, such as cross-border collaboration with other institutions, tracking of illegal websites, blocking of such websites, and blocking payments to them, among others.
TA, meanwhile, focuses on eradicating the tools that black market operators are utilising to avoid scrutiny, such as indexing manipulation, VPN use, AI to evade detection, and URL concealment.
Lastly, MS deals with disrupting advertisers and affiliates based in the UK, enforcing advertising standards through the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), as well as in-depth analysis of SEO marketing.
Estimating the size of the online black market
The latest and final chapter in this four-part study uncovers the three approaches that the UKGC is taking to estimate just how prominent the black market is.
Through the dwell-time approach, the regulator estimates average engagement and time-spent-on-site data – but it largely relies on assumptions, and each additional assumption adds additional margins for error, the UKGC recognised.
The channelisation approach involves comparing engagement rates with the legal and illegal market, but the caveat here is also the need for multiple assumptions.
With the third approach, the UKGC bets on survey-based data. However, this can also often lead to misrepresented assumptions.
All in all, the conclusion was that illegal online gambling is “clandestine” and its exact size often changes and almost always remains in the shadows, with participation rates diluted by a wide range of consumer behaviours.
Reflecting on the latest findings and painting the way forward, Ben Haden, UKGC Director of Research and Statistics, commented: “We have set out areas of work to focus upon. By breaking down the challenge into its constituent parts, it is possible to see a pathway to making an estimate that is fit for purpose.
“Getting there will also need input from operators – data on the legal market will help us strengthen assumptions and update our evidence base. We are looking forward to further conversations to clarify what we need and how operators can help.
“While the exercise of trying to understand the macro-metric of the size of the illegal market is important, the generation of trend data – and insight into specific websites to target disruption activity, is arguably even more vital. We are pleased we are now able to better understand these trends and supply key operational data to our Enforcement Team.”